


The Tarmac

by Calais_Reno



Series: Just Johnlock [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining, Reunions, Separations, The Tarmac Scene (Sherlock), True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24335896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: There are things that need to be said.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Just Johnlock [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856749
Comments: 71
Kudos: 165





	The Tarmac

The flight is diverted to some nameless airport in the middle of nowhere. Something mechanical is the trouble, compounded by the weather. As they descend, Sherlock can see little below, just treeless expanses and a runway that hardly looks long enough for landing a plane of this size. It’s a close thing; they feel the bump of the landing gear, the wheels making contact with the ground, and it’s over. Welcome to nowhere.

He stands on the tarmac with the other passengers, waiting for a bus to take them to a hotel (if such a thing exists in this level of hell), the snow coming down as if it intends to cover every inch of the world as quickly as possible. The runway is mostly clear because of the driving wind, but the scenery around them is losing definition, turning into a soft, shapeless world of white.

Flipping his collar up, he tightens his scarf and regards his fellow passengers. The flight originated in Beijing, the plane only half-full, and most of the passengers are wearing face masks. The vaccine has made this mostly unnecessary, but after months of quarantine, many people are uneasy about sharing air with others. An airplane is like a test tube, he thinks, where everyone’s germs mingle, circulate, react, and create more sickness.

On the plane he’d slept, exhausted from weeks in places that had new names now, different from the ones he’d learned in school. He is fifty-three and getting too old for this, on his way back to a London that he might not recognise after so many years.

The cold goes right through his coat; he wraps his arms around himself, bounces a bit. It doesn’t help. The wind cuts between his hat and his scarf, making tears stream from his eyes. Soon the bus will arrive, probably an old, rattly thing that will bump its way over the decaying roads and deposit them in front of a Soviet-style building with a sign in Russian informing them that it is, in fact, a hotel.

He counts the passengers. Sixty-eight of them, an economic windfall for whatever piece of nowhere this is. There won’t be king-sized beds and room service. There will be narrow, lumpy mattresses on creaking frames, a lift that is out of order (the sign reporting that fact yellowed with age), and stout, kerchiefed women preparing breakfast in the morning— porridge, tea, fried dough. He has been in places like this more times than he can count.

Another tarmac, years ago. He and John facing one another, neither of them knowing what to say. He made a joke that time, saw John’s surprised smile, heard his laugh. They’d shaken hands then, said goodbye. _To the very best of times, John._ That moment (the wind moving his hair, the smell of fuel, John squinting into the sun and smiling) he kept fresh in his mind, pulling it up at times when he needed to remember why he was doing this. ( _John smiling, his eyes sad_.) The words they said to one another that day were not what he wanted to say ( _iloveyou iloveyou iloveyou_ ), and the handshake was not a hug, not a kiss, but by then it was too late for those things. Maybe it had always been too late.

The bus arrives, an ancient, rusting vehicle with just enough seats for sixty-eight stranded passengers and their hand luggage. The remaining suitcases are tied onto the roof rack. Like refugees, they file onto the bus and take their seats. A few stand. The heater isn’t working. That’s the way such things are in former Soviet Bloc countries. You either get something beyond expectations, or below civilised standards. Gourmet meals, or fried dough. Stunning landscapes, more sky than a photograph could ever capture, and a rutted road leading to colourless towns built up in the 1970’s, communist-era buildings without personality.

And this is where he has spent the last seventeen years. He used to count the days, but after the first couple of years, it began to seem pointless. Like putting mile markers in the vast Kazakh Steppe.

The hotel is a small concrete building with a flat roof, no external ornamentation. The lobby is too crowded for everyone to fit inside, so he waits near the end of the line, outside. Nobody talks. He could sleep on the floor, he’s so tired. As places go, he has experienced worse.

As he nears the desk, he becomes aware that they are being assigned roommates. Not surprising, given the size of the building. He is last in line, takes the key the tired clerk hands him and receives instructions to find the stairwell, since the lift is not working. Fortunately, he always travels light, making his ascent up the narrow stairway less difficult. In his rucksack are his current change of clothing, extra underwear, and a few toiletries. These are just his emergency provisions. Normally, he’d be met by a handler who would give him what he needs, including a new burner phone. His last mobile is in his pocket, its battery dead.

On the landing he pauses. The lights flicker. He’s spent nights in many hotels like this. In some places, they turn off the electricity at night. (They are just _places_ , not cities, towns, regions, or districts. Those things have carefully defined borders and markers on colourful maps. A _place_ has no borders; on a map, you zoom in and there’s only a speck floating in empty space.) It’s going on nine, he thinks, and if that’s when the lights go off, he’d better hurry so he can get a look at his roommate. The idea of sleeping in a room with a stranger is not worrying; it’s just easier to deduce the risks when he can see that stranger.

It’s times like this, when he’s climbing the steps in an old building, that his mind returns to his old rooms on Baker Street. He imagines coming through the front door with the crooked knocker, giving a shout to Mrs Hudson, and climbing seventeen steps to the flat. He can feel the warmth of the fire, see the comfortable clutter they live in. He can hear Mrs Hudson calling up the stairs.

Mycroft told him she’d died. She wasn’t so old, he’d thought. Maybe she just seemed young to him because she always defied the changes she didn’t like. She’d had a hip replacement, went to physio, but never fully recovered. He’d seen the signs of dementia years ago, when he returned from his first exile. It had been hard for her, he knew. First he was gone, and then John moved out. He’d returned, but John didn’t move back in. And then he was gone again. Once, years ago, he’d helped her out of an abusive marriage, and then she’d given him a place to live after rehab. And for sixteen months, while John lived there, it was home.

When he was exiled, he didn’t even get to say goodbye to her. He sent her a letter. Maybe she’d written back, but he never received a reply. Undercover agents make terrible correspondents; they have no address, and their names change every few days. He’d told John, _six months._ But that was just a number he pulled out of the air; he knew it was a life sentence when Mycroft told him.

Sometimes his mind takes shelter there, in their Baker Street rooms, sitting in his chair in front of the hearth, John looking up from his book and smiling. When this happens, he feels a longing so intense that it’s almost painful, and he has to stop what he’s doing and breathe carefully until the ache subsides.

It’s better if he doesn’t remember that too often.

The door to room 221 is ajar as he approaches ( _ironic that it should be that number_ ). A sliver of light slants out into the dark hallway. Someone is waiting inside.

The room is spare: a single uncovered bulb screwed into the ceiling, a bed, a small table and chair. His roommate is rummaging through a small leather bag. A doctor’s bag. His head is ducked, but he can see his silhouette. He is a small man, a pair of glasses propped on his forehead, fair hair mostly gone grey, a shoulder injury that makes him stoop a bit. As Sherlock enters, he looks up and their eyes meet.

John Watson.

His eyes are still the same dark blue. His hair is tousled from the wool hat he has just removed, a few strands falling over his forehead, perhaps concealing a hairline that has receded a bit. He is thinner than Sherlock might have imagined. Marriage added a few pounds, gave him a bit of a paunch. That is now gone. He looks tired.

Sherlock is aware that his own appearance has altered in the years since that day on the tarmac. He wears his hair short now, a concession to living conditions that don’t allow for much grooming, and it has more than a few strands of silver. He is thinner, and his joints have made him slower. The cigarettes have given him fine lines around his mouth and eyes. People who used to know him might not recognise this Sherlock Holmes.

But there is recognition in John’s eyes.

Neither one of them speaks. Then the lights go out.

There is a kind of darkness that exists in places like this, unpolluted by the lights of a big city. A dense darkness that you can almost feel against your skin. He can hear John’s breath catch. Everything feels close.

“Sherlock.” It’s a whisper.

“Yes, John, it’s me.”

“Oh, God. Sherlock.” In his mind, he can see John’s honest face, now gone slack with astonishment.

“I didn’t expect…” he begins. “John, what are you doing here?”

“Doctors Without Borders.”

“The pandemic,” Sherlock says. “You volunteered when the virus struck in 2015. You stayed on because…” He doesn’t really want to ask about Mary, though she is the entire reason he had to leave and could never come home. He’d killed Magnusson for John, to make sure his wife and child were safe. For that, he gave up his freedom.

“She’s gone,” John says. “Left within days of you.”

“The baby?”

There is silence, in which he imagines John shaking his head. “Look, why don’t we sit? There’s a chair here, and the bed.”

He takes a few steps forward, feeling for either one of those, and bumps into something. “I’ve found the bed.”

“I’ll take the chair,” John says. A scraping sound indicates that he’s moved it closer to the bed.

Sherlock sits on the bed, feels for the headboard. It’s not a large bed, he notices, and there’s only one.

“Well,” John says. A small laugh, more than a chuckle, tinged with bitterness. A very _Watson_ laugh. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Small world.” The dialogue is trite, and the situation might be part of a formulaic comedy. If this were a comedy, though, they would be stuck in a lift. In this building, that would be a death sentence. He wonders, idly, how many skeletons are in the hotel lift, the one with the ancient sign.

“You’re here on business?” John asks.

“Not here, specifically,” he replies. He’s aware that he is on guard, not ready to reveal too much. They may be sitting just feet away from one another, but the years have made that distance feel like an endless expanse of steppe. He doesn’t know this John yet, and isn’t sure how much he should entrust to him. “I was on my way back to London. And you?”

“You still live in London, then,” John says, ignoring his question.

“Not for years. I’ve only recently been… recalled.” _Pardoned,_ maybe. Or just forgotten, after so many years. At some point, nobody remembered or cared. He’s shot so many more people since that day at Appledore.

“You’re still working for MI6?”

If he could see John’s face, he would have an idea where this was going. He could put up the necessary roadblocks and this could be just an odd coincidence, another lazy turn of the universe. A random event that will cause other events. Laws of motion have deposited them in this hotel, not some invisible force.

Just as they brought an ex-army doctor into Bart’s lab one day, all those years ago, and Sherlock looked up and saw—

“Sorry,” says John. “Didn’t mean to pry. It’s just weird, running into you like this.”

“It’s fine.”

But it isn’t. One conversation, all those years ago, sitting in Angelo’s, set them on the entire chain of events that followed. _Married to my work._

Well, he has been now, for seventeen years. He’s done nothing but work. He hasn’t even bothered to have a home base, preferring to live like a nomad, spending any free time he has in whatever spot looks interesting. By now, he’s seen more of the world than anyone he knows, including Mycroft. And he’s worn out.

“I have been working for them, yes. I was going to take a little time off, though. Thought I’d like to see London again.”

In the darkness, he hears John hum. It’s a sound he used to be able to read. It meant agreement, consideration, a question he didn’t know how to ask. That little furrow between his brows, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. Once, he knew all John’s expressions.

This is oddly like a time he remembers, years ago, just a few months after they met. They were together, hiding in a supply closet, listening for a suspect to leave. Pressed close, unavoidably touching, he could smell John’s shampoo, hear him breathing, but couldn’t see him in the pitch darkness. Their hands found one another and held on, grounding them both. He remembers the warmth of John’s hand, and how it made his breath quicken, his heart race, while at the same time making him feel that everything in his life had just slotted into place. It was like coming home. He remembers this, and wants to reach out, touch John, to ground himself.

In that closet, he had still hoped. He threw himself off a building to keep this man safe, and when he returned, he understood what the price of John’s life was. His regrets are all his own, for what he never said, not for what he had to do.

Now… he is too old, too tired. He drowned his hope in the long weeks after the tarmac, when it became clearer, day by day, that there was no going back. He had saved John, but those sixteen months were all he was ever meant to have of him.

“I haven’t been back, either,” John says. “Don’t take many holidays. I was heading back to Geneva. That’s been my home base for years now.”

“We were on the same plane,” Sherlock notes. “You flew from Beijing.”

“Yes. Seeing some friends, sharing some research, sort of a diplomatic visit. So much is done virtually now, since the pandemic, but medicine is still mostly hands-on. I suppose your work is, too.” John is smiling now. Sherlock knows this because of the warmth he suddenly feels. John’s smiles always did that to him.

“Indeed.” He shifts himself back against the headboard. “Are you uncomfortable? Would you rather sit here?”

“I’m fine.” Then, abruptly, “Look, Sherlock. There are things I’d like to say to you.”

And here is the seed of his anxiety. John will probably apologise, certainly demand to know things. Both of them are— used to be— rubbish at talking. John has a way of saying things that leaves everything in doubt, and Sherlock is reluctant to have that conversation because it will only make everything hurt more.

“It isn’t necessary,” he replies. “It’s been a long time. There are things we should simply let go.”

A soft laugh. “Sherlock, I’ve been having conversations in my head with you for seventeen years. No, longer. The whole time you were gone— the first time, that is— I talked to you as well. It’s time for me to say things to you.”

It can’t be unsaid now. John was angry, betrayed, offended that he died and didn’t tell him it was a joke. Sherlock returned with a penciled-in moustache and a fake accent and laughed at John’s distress. And he didn’t apologise, not really. _To the very best of times, John._

“There are things I need to say,” John repeats.

“Yes,” he says. “I suppose there are.”

He hears John sigh. “Mary is dead. At least, Mycroft said she was, when I asked him to help me apply for annulment. The last time I saw her was the day after you left.”

“The baby?” He’d never asked Mycroft, and that, he realises, was deliberate. He didn’t imagine a small child with John’s smile. He didn’t imagine happy birthdays and happy Christmases and holidays at the shore, John and Mary holding a small child’s hands as they walk in the waves. A family. He was careful never to imagine any of that. He had been willing to die for that, had given his freedom instead, but he didn’t have to put it in his Mind Palace.

“Not mine. Like so many other things about her, that was a lie. She left the DNA test on the kitchen table when she made her exit. I made a mistake, Sherlock, a terrible mistake. You’ve paid for that, and I don’t know how to say I’m sorry.”

“You loved her.”

“I don’t think it was love. It was moving on, I thought, after you died. That’s what people do, right? Grief isn’t supposed to last forever. You’re meant to get on with things, make a life. That hadn’t seemed possible when you died. She made me think it was something I could do, have a regular life.”

There’s an intimacy that is tolerable, talking in the dark like this. If they had met in the airport, waiting for a flight, or at the baggage claim, they would not have said any of these things. They would have been awkward, polite, distant. Here, in the dark, it’s possible to say the things he’s never admitted.

“You were angry with me,” he says quietly. “That night I came back, you were so angry with me, and you tried to explain, but I had totally missed it. You hadn’t any reason to wait for me, believing me dead, and you had moved on. When you saw me, you felt tricked, as if all your grief was a joke to me.” He closes his eyes, feeling the prickle of tears. “I never thought it was a joke, John. It was a miscalculation. I expected you to be happy to see me, ready to come home with me— and I saw you with her. You chose her—“

“I did.” Shallow breathing, a pause. “For two years, I’d thought you were dead. What was I supposed to do?” He’s asking himself this question, not Sherlock. He can hear that it’s something John still doesn’t have an answer for. “She was pregnant, and I couldn’t— and then she shot you, and you shot Magnussen— Sherlock, you said _six months_! Just six months, you said, somewhere undercover in Eastern Europe. Did you know?”

“I suspected, but hoped things would change, and Mycroft could bring me back. I only recently got clearance to return to London. I thought— I thought— oh, John. I thought you loved her. And the baby. I did it to protect your family. I had to kill Magnussen, and was willing to accept the consequences.”

“Six months,” he repeats. “What happened? I went to Mycroft. All he would say was, _his services are still required._ He wouldn’t tell me where you were or what you were doing. _Classified._ Hell, you might have been dead, for all I knew.”

“I wasn’t.” Nearly dead, several times. Mostly dead, all the time. The decision to stay away was easy. John would be better off, he might be happy, and that was the only thing that mattered. He didn’t dare imagine anything else.

“Obviously.” John exhales forcefully. “I waited, but Mycroft would always put me off when I asked about you. I stuck it out for a year. Mary and the baby were gone; there was no reason to stay.” He laughs. “You know, that Christmas before, at your parents’ house, she and I talked.” He is hesitating now, trying to explain something. “It was because of the baby. I didn’t want… but I didn’t know what else to do. She shot you— and I went back to her! I knew what she was. Jesus. When she left, can you believe that I was actually shocked? That’s how deluded I was. I should have seen. I blame myself, Sherlock. I’m an idiot. And I’m sorrier than I can say.” In the darkness, he sighs. “That’s what I’ve most wanted to say to you.”

“I suppose we were both reaching conclusions without sufficient evidence.”

“I knew,” John says. “I had enough evidence. I just didn’t use it.”

“You had reasons not to use it. You had a family. I urged you to forgive her because I wanted that for you.” Anything to make John happy. For two years, he’d let his best friend grieve because he’d thought it best to keep him in the dark. He’d stayed away two years to keep John safe, let him be happy, even if it meant denying himself. His own feelings didn’t matter, not after a lifetime of being alone. _Alone protects me._ Only sometimes it doesn’t. “I’m sorry, John, so sorry. It appears I was wrong. She’d been inactive for so long, it appeared that she had retired.”

“She was an assassin, Sherlock. She killed people.”

“I’ve killed people, too. So have you.”

“She tried to kill you. _Shot_ you— I couldn’t—“ His voice caught. “I should never have gone back to her. You… forgave— and I took her back because of the baby.”

In the dark, he smiles. “When you love someone, it doesn’t matter what they’ve done. You’ll do anything for them.”

There is a long silence. The wind rattles the windows and howls through the cracks. The room is cold enough that they might see their breath vaporise— if they could see anything. He imagines their breath in a cloud between them, unspoken words now visible. He imagines breathing those words in and being warmed.

“You’re right,” John says. “If you love someone, it doesn’t matter. You forgive them, even if they’ve left you to grieve for years.”

“John. I don’t—“

“I didn’t love her, Sherlock, and I don’t forgive her, even if she’s dead. She never did _talk me around_ , you know. She had no intention of doing that. I knew the moment I saw you wearing that silly moustache that I’d forgive you. She saw it, too. And she knew. That’s why she shot you. You were the real threat to her, not Magnussen. She saw what you meant to me. Do you know, once your plane took off, I was still standing on the tarmac, watching you fly away, and she came up beside me and held my hand, and I realised I didn’t love her. I knew. She must have known, too. The next morning, she was gone.”

“She shot me because… what did she know, John?”

“If you love someone, you forgive them,” John said.

He imagines these words floating in the darkness like tiny stars, casting off bits of light.

“I will never forgive her, Sherlock. But I forgive you.” He sighs. “I have always hoped that you might forgive me.”

Sherlock sits forward, groping towards John’s voice. Finding his hand, he wraps his fingers around it. “It’s too cold in here. The bed is large enough for us both.”

This non-sequitur does not require explanation. He hears clothing removed in the darkness, shoes hitting the floor, and takes off his own shoes and jacket. They arrange themselves side by side under the blankets. The temperature has been dropping since the electricity went off. He can feel John’s jumper and wool trousers. He turns and puts his arms around John, and John does the same.

They are fully clothed, lying pressed together in a lumpy bed. John smells like cheap hotel soap and stale aftershave, bad coffee and disinfectant, and something essential, something that is only him.

“It’s you I loved, always. Still do,” John whispers. “But I made so many mistakes. I went through with the wedding because I felt I owed her— and I was too angry to see you properly, what you’d done for me. I needed time to think, and there wasn’t any. I didn’t know what to do. I regret so many things.”

His lips brush John’s ear. “There’s nothing to forgive. I have never blamed you.”

When he stood on the roof of Bart’s Hospital, Sherlock felt many regrets. There were things he wished he’d said. If he’d said them, if he hadn’t been married to his work, he might have had a different plan. Maybe he wouldn’t have torn the two of them apart, broken everything they had that was good. Those precious months they’d had after John moved in— he’d been a coward, afraid to speak, and that was what destroyed everything. He’d run after Moriarty, a worthy villain, he’d thought, a villain who _courted him_. And he hadn’t seen what John’s affection had meant— or understood the possibilities.

“I should have told you,” he whispers. He should have told John everything, beginning that first day. When he heard John awkwardly fishing, trying to gauge his interest, he should have said, _I’m amenable._ That night at the Landmark, facing John’s rage and grief, he should have said, _I’m sorry I left you. I didn’t know it would hurt you so badly. Please forgive me._ He should have said _come home to me_ as soon as he recognised what Mary was. He should have said, _I’m afraid of what I feel for you_. _I don’t know how to tell you._

In the darkness, he feels John’s warmth and his steady heartbeat. John takes his hand and their fingers intertwine. “I love you, John.”

Then John is kissing him, and he is kissing back. There are too many clothes; shirts, jumpers, and trousers are discarded. They are two men lying in a narrow bed, wearing the same underwear they’ve worn for two days, both of them a bit rank, kissing as if their lives depended on it. Two men not good at talking, now needing no words.

The light from the window wakes him up. Eyes still closed, he gropes towards the other side of the bed, where the warmth had been. Where—

Cold sheets.

His disappointment is heavy. He’s had hallucinations before, but those times generally involved drugs, or exhaustion, or extreme pain. He keeps his eyes closed, trying to stay in the dream (must have been a dream). John, warm in his arms, telling him that he’d loved him for years, that he’d wished—

A heavy weight descends in his gut. It’s a cruel trick his mind has played on him. This time, though, has broken him.

He thinks about the bullet that went into his chest, stopping his heart. He remembers how everything slowed when he realised he was dying.

This feels like that. A slow death. He’s been doing that for years.

He’ll go back to London, he decides. He’ll see Mycroft and then take another assignment. He’ll just keep doing this forever, until he has paid the price for everything. Life is cruel. Alone protects him.

But something has softened in him, he realises, something he’s tried to keep out has returned. He remembers climbing the stairs at Baker Street, the floor upstairs creaking under John’s feet. He imagines opening the door, and John saying—

“Bloody loo’s backed up.”

The bed dips. Cold knees press against his legs and a pair of strong arms wrap around him, shivering, as he slides under the blankets.

“John.”

“Sorry. Cold feet.” He snuggles against Sherlock. “The bus will be here in two hours, I heard them say. Whoa— you’re squeezing the air out of me, Sherlock.”

“I missed you. I thought…” But he can’t say it. He’s felt it for years, but now it might justkill him.

John kisses the top of his head. “I’ve missed you too. So much. I can’t believe you’re here.”

He loosens his hug and shifts so they’re facing each other. In the light of day, he can see how John’s aged— his eyes, puffy from sleep, the lines on his face, the grey hairs in his whiskers. He grins at Sherlock. “I’m not so pretty in daylight, I’m afraid.”

“Nor am I,” he says, smiling back.

“Doesn’t matter,” John says. “I’ve got you captured up here.” He taps his forehead. “You, that day in the lab, looking up at me. _Afghanistan or Iraq?_ You, on the sofa, in your Mind Palace, saying _next time, think it over._ You, always looking bloody gorgeous, with your collar flipped up and your cheekbones.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Yeah, you do.” He hesitates, looking into Sherlock’s eyes. “You did, I mean. Sherlock, this was… good.” He laughs. “What am I saying? I don’t have words for what this means.”

He pulls John closer, pressing wordless kisses to his face, his neck, his shoulder. “No explanation necessary,” he whispers.

After a minute, John pulls back, that small furrow appearing between his brows. “But what now? We’ve been strangers for seventeen years.”

“Come to London,” he says, the words out of his mouth before he thinks them.

“I have to go to Geneva.”

He clings more tightly, unwilling to let go. “All right. I have to go to London and settle things. Then I’ll come to you in Geneva.”

“No, it’s time I came back to London,” John says. “It’s been years. Without you, it felt wrong, but it’ll be different now.” He frowns. “Though I’m not sure I want to see Mycroft. I’m still rather put out with him. When’s your next, erm, assignment?”

“There won’t be another assignment.” He’s looking at John’s shoulder scar in the light. He remembers seeing it years ago, when it was new. Then it was an angry red, raised and still painful. Now it’s pale silver, the borders not so defined. He traces it with his finger. “Does it still hurt?”

“Not much. It aches a bit when it’s cold.” John touches the scar where Mary’s bullet went into his chest, now a small pucker. “Time heals all wounds.”

The bus takes them to another plane, which flies them to a small city, Tashkent, where they catch a much larger plane that will bring them to Bucharest.

They face one another on the tarmac. Inside the airport they will find their final connections to their destinations. Squinting at each other in the bright sunlight, they tug their coats close against the cold, not speaking. The wind lifts John’s hair and it’s so much like that long-ago goodbye that his eyes fill.

“This time is different,” John says, answering Sherlock’s fears. “You have my number, so text me when you get a new phone. I’ll send you my flight information. Two weeks, maybe, and I can come to London.”

 _And then what?_ “Will you be able to stay for a while?”

Looking at John, he’s not sure he can stand to get on a plane and leave without him. They’ve both changed, and it’s been just a few hours since they found each other. John has a job, a life. How easy it would be for him to slip back into whatever life he’s built for himself; emails, phone conferences, consultations will be waiting for him in Geneva. He fears he’ll never see him again, that he’ll wake up in a new flat in London that feels much colder than the hotel bed they shared last night. The days between now and that (improbable) reunion will feel like the years that have separated them.

John smiles. “When I come back to London, I’m planning to stay forever, if that’s all right with you.”

 _Forever._ For seventeen years, all he’s done is move from one city to another, completing one assignment after another. He’s not wanted to stay in any of them. There is only one place that he has ever thought of as home, and it’s really a person, not a place. Anywhere he stays could be home, as long as John is there.

“Yes,” he says. “I want you to stay.”

John’s smile is brilliant. Everything is different now. On that long ago tarmac, John was sad, and Sherlock had made a joke, just to see hear him laugh one more time. So many things about that day were wrong. The memory of it has worn a rut in his mind.

He feels lighter today. All at once he remembers being young, having John beside him and hoping that would last forever. He remembers that first night, returning to the flat and wanting to push him up against the wall and kiss him, but worried that he would lose him if he did. Now he has kissed him, made love to him, and John is here, in the flesh. He’s not an hallucination or a faded memory or an image stored in his mind.

John reaches for him, his arms going around Sherlock and pulling him close. Their kiss is what he felt that day long ago, and many days in between. It is everything he has wanted to say to John and can now say.

“Stay, John. Stay forever.”

* * * 

_Grow old along with me!_

_The best is yet to be,_

_the last of life, for which the first was made…_

_— Robert Browning_

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to end it at the "it was all a dream" moment, but couldn't do it. Sorry for the momentary angst. I aim for happy endings, and a bit of angst makes it sweeter.


End file.
